“the violence that it does to people’s souls by forcing them to say or imply what they do not believe, but must not question.”
The healthy people in any society reject this involuntarily, regardless of the sphere in which it exists, i.e. political, religious. They may not be able to state it forthrightly at first, but from the beginning and no matter the duress they're under, they begin to make internal arrangements so that what they know to be true won't be destroyed or made ineffective by any manner of deconstruction.
Theodore Dalrymple: Political correctness is communist propaganda writ small. In my study of communist societies, I came to the conclusion that the purpose of communist propaganda was not to persuade or convince, nor to inform, but to humiliate; and therefore, the less it corresponded to reality the better. When people are forced to remain silent when they are being told the most obvious lies, or even worse when they are forced to repeat the lies themselves, they lose once and for all their sense of probity. To assent to obvious lies is to co-operate with evil, and in some small way to become evil oneself. One’s standing to resist anything is thus eroded, and even destroyed. A society of emasculated liars is easy to control. I think if you examine political correctness, it has the same effect and is intended to.
In Orwell's 1984 when the State, after having set them up, captures a couple of 'infidels' they employ the method of tapping into these peoples ultimate fears to get confessions, retractions, the whole thing. I can't remember the character's name, but he's afraid of rats, so his interrogator places a cage over his head and tells him that there's a rat inside it in its own compartment, and tells him that if he doesn't come clean, he's gonna release the rat. So, the guy turns in his accomplice, and gives the interrogator exactly what he was looking for, but IIRC, there never was any rat in the cage. They tapped into this guys blind fear.
But how is that possible? Don’t we have free speech here? And we have no Gulag?
The IslaminternThe simple fact is that we never won the Cold War as decisively as we should have. Yes, the Berlin Wall fell, and the Soviet Union collapsed. This removed the military threat to the West, and the most hardcore, economic Marxism suffered a blow as a credible alternative. However, one of the really big mistakes we made after the Cold War ended was to declare that Socialism was now dead, and thus no longer anything to worry about. Here we are, nearly a generation later, discovering that Marxist rhetoric and thinking have penetrated every single stratum of our society, from the Universities to the media. Islamic terrorism is explained as caused by “poverty, oppression and marginalization,” a classic, Marxist interpretation.
What happened is that while the “hard” Marxism of the Soviet Union may have collapsed, at least for now, the “soft” Marxism of the Western Left has actually grown stronger, in part because we deemed it to be less threatening. The “hard” Marxists had intercontinental nuclear missiles and openly said that they would “bury” us. The soft Marxists talk about tolerance and may seem less threatening, but their goal of overthrowing the evil, capitalist West remains the same. In fact, they are more dangerous precisely because they hide their true goals under different labels. Perhaps we should call it “stealth Socialism” instead of soft Socialism.
What's present in the Country is a dis-appreciation for what it took to raise the Country to where it is. I despise this dis-appreciation because I'm a naturalized citizen, and I know the difference between freedom and tyranny, based on the testimony of my lovely WW II surviving parents, who at the ages of 80 and 74 still regularly exclaim, 'it was a dream to come to this Country.' 'God bless America.' This isn't some saccharine laden nostalgia, it's a perpetual adherence to historical truth. And I mention this because there are many people who otherwise paint the US as decadent because of the consumerism, etc. that is part and parcel of what drives the Country's economy. They've never actually plowed the fields that yielded precious little, as my parents did in Italy. They've never actually picked cotton all day long, so that when faced with the choice between picking cotton and working in a factory, they run and do not walk, to their time-cards. I think this mindset is a danger to the Country too, because its pontificators pontificate from a position in which a choice was available to them. They don't know real misery. I mean I don't either, except through the eyes of my parents, but the misery that plagued Italy is the reason they came to this blessed Country. And this kind of vicarious righteousness that these pontificators put forth is the substance of the soft socialism that Mr. Dalrymple speaks of.
Once you weaken an economy that pretty much leaves people alone to pursue what is in their potential to pursue, Hitler, Mao, Stalin and their ideas are easily sold because the misery index has created such a great supply of buyers.
Hi AlbionGirl. This was a one-time ad hoc ping list that I cobbled together to give this article some exposure. I don't know if I've ever come across an article that makes so many important points. It's relentless: point after point after illumination after insight. It seemed like a shame for it so slip into the Saturday afternoon ether unnoticed, so I decided a ping was in order. I included posters who I recalled as having said interesting things about PC-ness, or Marxism, or the Left generally, and who would probably have an interest in the article. I knew the regulars on the philosophy threads would dig it, so I tossed a few of you guys in. Glad to hear you liked it and I hope others do as well!